Obama: No "plot imposed from abroad" during Euromaidan events in Ukraine in 2014

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U.S. President Barack Obama said at a UN General Assembly meeting on Tuesday that there was no "plot imposed from abroad" during Euromaidan events in Ukraine in 2014.

"After all, the people of Ukraine did not take to the streets because of some plot imposed from abroad. They took to the streets because their leadership was for sale and they had no recourse," he said.

"They demanded change because they saw life get better for people in the Baltics and in Poland, societies that were more liberal, and democratic, and open than their own," he added.

Euromaidan protests on Kyiv's Independence Square, or Maidan Nezalezhnosti, began late in 2013 after pro-European activists had been beaten and killed by law enforcement agencies. The protests made the then president Viktor Yanukovych flee Ukraine for Russia in February 2014. It was followed by the annexation by Russia of Ukraine's Crimea in March 2014 and Russian aggression in Donbas, eastern Ukraine, which is dubbed by the incumbent Ukrainian authorities "Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO)."